It is a staple of the octopus metaphor in propaganda and cartoons to plop an octopus on a globe to represent the threat to civilisation that group X presents, which I will call “Tentacles/Arms Around the World” (any creative ability fails me at the moment). I will cover its sibling, Octopus on a Map, in a future post.
A limited selection follows:
• In ca. 1938 a German cartoon showed Churchill as a Jewish octopus with his arms around the globe (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Europe).
• Later, a French cartoon in 1945 showed Hitler as an octopus with his arms around the globe (www.picturehistory.com/product/id/4453).
• In around 1950/1938 Stalin was represented as an octopus in such a position in a pamphlet “The Red Octopus: How Communism Works” (www.picturehistory.com/product/id/2212).
• “Terrorism” was depicted as an octopus with its arms around the world in an Akhbar Al-Khaleej cartoon on 25th July 2005. This particular octopus had explosives strapped to its arms and ‘was fed by a missile termed “Bush’s Wars”’ (www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA23505).
But this metaphor is not restricted to the pictorial world of cartoons. A quote lifted from an US government website from 2006:
Frank Urbancic Jr., principal deputy coordinator of the State Department’s Counterterrorism Office said that even though Hezbollah portrays itself as a Lebanese nationalist movement it best could be imagined “as almost an octopus with the head in southern Lebanon and the tentacles moving around the world.” With the exception of Iran and Syria, its state sponsors, the tentacles “are for supply and support”. — America.gov, Hezbollah “an Octopus” with Tentacles Around World, Officials Say, Bureau of International Programs, U.S. Department of State, 28 Sept 2006 (www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2006/September/2006092818525adynned0.8449823.html)
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
